Web Service Gateway Authentication for Open API Security
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional web services lack effective authentication mechanisms to distinguish between legitimate and malicious applications, allowing unauthorized access and potential threats from spam bots and other malicious entities.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a web service gateway within an open API platform to intercept and authenticate applications before granting access to web services, involving multi-step authentication processes to verify application authorization, user permissions, and end-user consent.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional web services use open APIs without authentication, then accessibility and ease of operation are improved, but security and reliability deteriorate due to unauthorized access from malicious applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a web service gateway as an intermediary component between applications and web services. The gateway intercepts requests from applications, performs authentication by checking authorization tokens and verifying application identities, and only forwards authenticated requests to the web services. This mediator approach maintains open API accessibility while adding necessary security validation, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and reliability.
2Reliability
If a web service gateway implements multi-step authentication, then security and reliability are improved, but device complexity and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary authentication actions where the web service gateway checks authorization tokens and validates application identities before forwarding requests to web services. By performing these authentication checks in advance at the gateway layer, the system establishes security protocols upfront, reducing the need for complex repeated authentication during service execution and managing complexity through structured pre-processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The authentication process is segmented into distinct components: token validation, application identity verification, and request forwarding. The web service gateway divides the authentication functionality into separate operational steps, making the complex authentication process more manageable and maintainable while ensuring comprehensive security validation.
3Reliability
If the web service gateway intercepts and authenticates all requests, then security is improved, but productivity and response time deteriorate due to additional processing steps
Solution Approach 1:
The web service gateway implements partial authentication action by checking authorization tokens and application identities only for requests that require authentication, rather than applying uniform complex authentication to all requests. This selective approach authenticates what is necessary to ensure security while minimizing unnecessary processing overhead, thereby maintaining productivity while improving access control security.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for authenticating applications that access web services. In one embodiment, a web service gateway intercepts a request for a web service from an application, and determines if the application is authorized by a service provider based on information provided in the web service request. If the application is authorized, then the web service gateway identifies a profile for an end user that initiated the web service using the application, and determines if the web service is allowed for the end user based on the profile. If the web service is allowed for the end user, then the web service gateway determines that the application is authenticated, converts the web service request to a protocol used by a server that provides the web service, and transmits the web service request to the server.